Business Class

We got up at 4am to take a 4.30am taxi to the airport. When we got to the lobby of our hotel, not only was the front door locked, it was locked by means of a metal shutter pulled across the whole front and padlocked. I had a moment of panic about how we were going to get to the airport, as we had no idea in which rooms the women who ran the hotel slept, when one of the women popped up from having been asleep on one of the wooden benches. Relieved of that worry, I was then glad that I did not know that I had been completely locked in each night that I had slept there.

We got to the airport in 30 minutes with almost no traffic on the roads only to find out at 5am that our 7am flight was delayed 10 hours until 5pm! After taking about 2 hours at the counter to figure out all of our flight connections, we were "invited" to the business class lounge where we spent the day lounging on one of the 2 couches (because we were the 3rd party to enter the lounge), reading English language newspapers, and eating spring rolls, bread and noodle bowls. Luckily they has let us check all our baggage early in the morning since we were returning one more backpack than we brought over, and none of them could now classify as a carry-on.

Business class to Hong Kong. Business class to San Francisco. A missed First Class connection to LA, replaced by a direct Economy class flight back to Dulles. While we waited to go through domestic security for our flight to Dulles, we had to scramble to consolidate the liquids left in our carry-ons into the requisite plastic bag. We had not had to worry about this on any Vietnam Airlines flight and did not realize we would have to go through another security check after customs. Good thing we gave all of our spare liquids to Hinh and his wife: extra sunscreen, moisturizer, afterbite, and 3 unopened bottles of 98% deet bug spray. Brad and I might have seen one mosquito each ~ but who knows, it could have actually been the same mosquito. When we asked about this, Hinh said they do not have them any more. Although we watched the US security check in amazement over the chaos, we made it through!

After over 38 hours from hotel to home and less than 6 hours of fitful airplane sleep, we were exhausted, but it was only 8am so we stayed up until 6pm to try to get back into the rhythm of our usual time zone.

What an amazing trip! and this blog only scratches the surface of our adventure! What will we miss the most? The food!! In fact, we are marinating some thin strips pork right now ~ Vietnamese style. What will we miss least? The heat. Would we go back? I would.